Sublime

Try the experiment of chewing on an oregano leaf, or a clove, or a vanilla bean. The result is far from pleasurable! When eaten as is, most spices and herbs are acrid, irritating, numbing.

Foods are mostly built out of just four kinds of molecules—water, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. And their behavior can be pretty well described with a few simple principles. If you know that heat is a manifestation of the movements of molecules, and that sufficiently energetic collisions disrupt the structures of molecules and eventually break... See more